#RPG Design

[mushroomwitchgames]

COMING NOV 22 - CATS KNOW THINGS

CATS KNOW THINGS is a light-hearted game meant to tell a humorous story of intrigue, all while pretending to be a very nosy cat. 

But you are no ordinary cat.

You are a very special feline who, through some magic you cannot explain, can communicate with your human, an individual who wishes to make their mark in society by any means necessary. The two of you decide to start a society page, (a very fancy type of tabloid newspaper dedicated to a particular location) revealing the glitz, glamour, and inner turmoil of the town’s most notable individuals. 

As the cat you will travel across town, using your stealth and wiles to listen in on the most intimate conversations and encounters. At the end of the day you return to your human to relay to them all the town’s salacious gossip for the society page. The goal is to prepare 6-8 items for the newspaper before your human sends them to the presses for the week.

CATS KNOW THINGS will be available on our Itch.io store at 9am PST on November 22!! Please reblog to get the work out! We're really excited to share this game with you!

[ayers-l]

ּׂׅ𝐄֢̌𝐕ּׂׅ͠𝐄ּׂׅ͜͠𝄖𝐑ּׂׅີ ㅤ.ㅤㅤ私た──心 .͠ 🛒 𖹭

✿ .ㅤㅤ采烈 ㅤ❜❜ㅤㅤ𝗌ּׂׅ𝖺ּׂׅ͜𝗎ֵּ𝖽͠𝖺ּׂׅ𝖽̫֭𝖾ㅤׅㅤ

アマドㅤ．ׄ ♥︎.ㅤ𝐅ֵ͠𝐎𑩑ּׂׅ𝐑ֵׂ͜𝄖𝐌ּׂׅ͠𝐈𝐍ּׂׅ̫𝐄᷼ ﹫

𝐀ֵּ𝐓֢𝐋ּׂׅ𝐀͠𝐍𝄖֥ᷓ͜𝐓ּׂׅ𝐈𝐂͠ㅤ︵ㅤׅㅤ분홍색 꽃

@you 애정ִㅤㅤ𝐜ּׁ֢𝐡ּׁׅ͠𝐚𝐬ֵּׅ̇𝄖𝐢𝐧ּׂׅ͠𝐠 ❨ 🐾❔️ ❩

외로운 여행자ㅤׄㅤ．ׄ ✿ 、𝗉︭֢֢֢✿𝖾ְ𝗍͠𝗋ּ𝗒

𝗮ּׁׅ𝗹𝗹֢͠ ּׁׅ𝗺︭֢֢ᷓ𝗶𝗻ּׁׅ͠𝗲ּׁׅㅤ✿ㅤㅤ@you 𝖺𝗋𝖾ㅤ．ׄ ✿⃘゙🤍、

﹫ㅤㅤ．ׄ .͠🐾 𖹭 ㅤ애정ִㅤ 𝗦ּׁׅ𝗛ֵᤡ✿֢͡𝗥ּׁׅᷓ𝗧͠

デンゴ ．ׄ ♥︎ㅤ𝗇'𝄖 𝖲ּׁׅ᷼𝖶֢ᷓ𝖤ּׁׅ𝖤̫ׅ𝖳ּׁㅤ❨ .💬 ❩

𝐋͜𝐈ᩢ𝐑ׁ 𝐈𝐎ּׁ̫𝐒 .͠ 🖊 𖹭ㅤ𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐦𝐞ㅤ．ׄ ♡ .

✿.ㅤ미친 듯한 ㅤ ( 𝐅𝄖֢𝐈𝐑ּׁ᷼𝐒𝐓͠ )

𝗊𝗎𝖾 𝗍𝗈𝗇ㅤ𝐀ּׁׅ͠𝐑ꫬּׁׅ𝐄֢𝄖ֵ𝐀ּׂׅ𝐓ּׅ͠✿ׄ ㅤㅤ집🤍

créditos a @ballerinevour

[s-che]

Tarot RPG designer ask game :)

i'm not sure if my reach here on tumblr is quite big enough for an ask game to work, but i'm going to try it anyway. ask & you will receive & all that

stolen, with apologies, from @wildwoodsgames.

The Fool – What do the earliest stages of work on a game look like for you? OR How did you get into game design? The Magician — What design skills are you best at? OR What skill have you been working on lately? The High Priestess — What role does intuition play in your process? OR Are the themes of your games planned or discovered? The Empress — Where do your ideas come from? OR Do you seek out or avoid inspiration while working on an idea? The Emperor — Do you have a process you follow with your design work? OR How important is mechanical complexity to you? The Hierophant — Who is a fellow game designer you’ve learned a lot from? OR What is a piece of popular wisdom about games you think is nonsense? The Choice — Which do you prefer: drafting or editing? Design or playtesting? Beginning projects or ending projects? Fluff or mechanics? Or a pair of your own invention. The Chariot — What is the next project you’re planning to start OR What is the next project you’re excited to finish? Justice — How importance is game balance to you? OR How personal are your games? The Hermit — What are the biggest lessons you’ve learned about game design? OR Are you interested in collaborating with others? The Wheel of Fortune — What is a game you think is underappreciated? OR What is a game you think is overhyped? Fortitude — What are your tricks for staying motivated in the middle of a project? OR Are you interested in making game design a career? The Hanged Man — What other creative pursuits do you have? OR What current trends in game design are you most interested in? Death — Talk about an idea you’d love to make that no-one would expect from you. Temperance — Who do you rely on for design advice? OR What is your approach to incorporating feedback? The Devil — What motifs or mechanics do you just keep coming back to? OR What is a game you’ve enjoyed playing in the last year? The Tower — Talk about about a game you tried to make that crashed and burned. The Star — Talk about a game you’re working on and what excites you about it. The Moon — Talk about a game you’re working on and what you’re struggling with. The Sun — Talk about a game you’ve made that you’re proud of. Judgement — Talk about a game you’ve made that taught you a lot. The World — Ask a question of your own invention.

[hendrik-ten-napel]

Most of the time, I like to have a fairly worked-out game when I start testing. No notes-on-a-napkin for me. But yesterday, I went into a playtest without the full material for the first time. The sessions were going well and I wanted to see how it would feel to do some design at the table.

The last category of clues for my mystery game is called Recapitulation. They serve to answer the question: "What do you plan to do about [the antagonist]?" While I had some idea of what those clues could be, the image hadn't really cleared up. So I thought: maybe I can just see what we need.

When the first moment to drop such a new clue came around, I still couldn't figure it out. In general, that could've become a moment of panic for me, but this time, probably because of the specific group I'm testing with, I didn't. Instead, I explained the issue—which was still scary!

After I explained what clues I was looking for, the players all pitched in. We used the scene that was just interrupted as an example and tried to think of good leads. We also thought about changing the question to something more narrow, like: "How will you avenge [the victim]?"

Then it hit me. A good, general clue that I could contextualize for the situation at hand, and that would work well with the question we started out with. I've been thinking about that moment, about how the conversation helped create it. Why didn't the player's suggestions irk me, for example?

The game is a Carved from Brindlewood. It's a hack of The Between, mostly. The things me and the players discussed yesterday, the clues and questions, weren't mechanics per se. More like the content of those mechanics, I guess. That made a difference, I think.

It was like discussing possible fiction. That's what I've concluded up until now, at least. While I'm not fond of discussing mechanics, at least not ad hoc, nor do I like unrequested notes on my writing, this was closer to play, closer to workshopping a scene, for example.

So I learned something about the details and elements of a game that I am comfortable determining at the table, and that feels like a nice, little achievement. I let go of some control, I trusted the people I know to care, and it worked: that first clue led to nine more today. I've finished writing the Recapitulation.

[commander-ben]

Post apocalyptic scamps

[goblincow]

Been thinking about this & putting it into practice when writing The Perilous Pear & Plum Pies of Pudwick for a while: thanks to the ever excellent @babblegumsam (who you are probably already following and if not now is your chance to rectify that) for the final straw that made me write this up today. I truly believe if you have any interest in TTRPGs, play, or design you'll get something out of it, it's a further 5.4 mins read from here on out.

--------------------

Play is interaction.

Reading is interaction.

Below I will argue the necessity & usefulness of thinking the relationship between reading & play in TTRPGs as (almost) the exact same thing to unlock a wide & deep potential as reader/player/designer.

--------------------

Reading & play don't have to be the same thing. But you can't play without reading (in the sense of reading representations, images, ideas, concepts, interactions, etc, not just written text), because then there could be no interaction.

Reading and play can both accurately describe a given act or process. For instance: I read a table or piece of prose in a TTRPG book.

I say this because this is an idea that people struggle with, and while I encourage debate around the concept, we first have to agree on some basic building blocks that I hope I'm able to communicate here. For instance, there exists a potential reality in which tabletop roleplaying games are called tabletop reading games and nothing else about them changes (except for the consequential ability to think of reading in ttrpgs as play, and the potential this tool unlocks), because the prerequisite role for all other roles being played in a role-playing game is that of the reader.

This is true for much more than TTRPGs, but if we simply focus on acknowledging that reading & play in ttrpgs can and often are the same thing, then we are able to make informed design choices on this basis that we otherwise lack the agency to make – and which are nonetheless choices that are being made while we miss the opportunity to observe, read & ultimately interact and/or change and/or play with them.

To not think of the relationship between reading & play in TTRPGs in this way is to limit your agency as a designer, reader, player, and ultimately to cause yourself to be unable to synthesise these roles which are deeply inter-related, perhaps more so than they are disparate.

However you define it, Good Design necessitates the application of the right tool for the job. This requires making, maintaining & improving the tools that you have access to. The reader/player relationship is not only one of these, but an integral one that precedes a great many (if not all) of the other tools that you can & do employ as designer/player/reader.

If you allow this tool to remain blunt and imprecise (and especially if you don't acknowledge that it exists and that you use it in every choice you make), what you are doing is making a choice to blunt all of your other tools, even if you aren't aware of it.

This is poor design, poor play, and poor reading,* and I believe that this is true regardless of how you define each of those terms.

*though of course we could - and I think should - argue over the semantics & limitations of my imprecise use of the word "poor" there and the further ideas it smuggles in unacknowledged, but I trust that you will be able to infer what I'm trying to communicate in my use of it and I further hope that by leaving this imprecise application of a tool here in the way that I have used it, it might serve as a good example of the consequences, limitations & potential dangers of applying tools/terms/ideas that might be best described as "too blunt for the job", which is the very thing I'm attempting to highlight & address here.

It would not seem very sensible to choose to limit yourself in this way unless it allowed you access to new tools, which is a choice that you could only make once you are familiar with the central idea I'm presenting here – in other words, if you break the rules without understanding them you are very unlikely to be taking a step forward and much more likely to just be shuffling in place or even stepping backwards.

I hope that this short interaction has unlocked or reinforced your access to a useful tool that will allow you to sharpen your understanding of the play/reading relationship in TTRPGs and in turn refine & maintain your existing tools and your ability to synthesise new ones.

I look forward to discovering with you what new agencies this allows us to unlock, and I hope you take what you have read here and play with it to design new realities that you & I have yet to imagine.

[herecomesthementalmeltdown]

i think we need to talk a little bit more about the racism present in the history of TTRPGs.

like, the medium spawned from the original versions of Dungeons & Dragons, which is a colonialist game at its heart.

also, pretty much every modern RPG, even the video games, has the concept of "critical hits". Critical hits can trace their origin back to 1975's Empire of the Petal Throne, a Mesoamerican-inspired science fantasy game... written by a Nazi.

that's not to say it's racist to engage with TTRPGs. i am a TTRPG designer and that would be akin to saying watching movies with dialogue is racist because of 1927's The Jazz Singer. i am simply saying that we should acknowledge this history, instead of running away from it.

[hifi-walkman]

Gonna start a challenge I made up, where I design a mini RPG based of random pages from RPG books I own.... Let's start with OSE, and a D100: I got page 57, which is Mercenaries! the rules for hiring, their types, and morale specifically. I'll reblog this post later today with the finished mini-RPG as a PDF. and feel free to reblog with any RPGs you think are cool and fit the concept/vibe of "mercenaries"

[abandonhopegame]

The Town of Hope Welcomes You with Open Arms

On the surface, Hope is a quaint seaside town filled with kind, welcoming people who choose to live a simple life by the sea. But those who live in Hope know all to well the dangers that lurk within their deceptive home. Founded by a secretive cult who worship a sinister god, the town is a hotbed of paranormal activity and monstrosities that are difficult to comprehend. As the infamous line says, “abandon all hope all ye who enter here”. 

As a member of the Gakuen Mystery Club, it’s up to you and your fellow members to make sense of the horrors that plague your small town. Consisting mainly of high schoolers and university students who have more courage than the adults of the town, members must contend with their dwindling sanity while solving the various mysteries that plague the town. The one thing that ties all the members together is the Mystery Club website, which amalgamates all the various strange happenings that occur within hope.

Are you willing to stare down the unspeakable? If you’re courageous enough, maybe hope won’t be abandoned after all…

[jorgeburgos8]

The waves rise with the flutter of his wings, Pterodaustro commands the tides like a cruel captain ready to send you to the cold depths, so you scurvy dogs better be ready

[slugdragoon]

RPG Role Analysis Series #15 - Mother 2/Earthbound

Mother 1 analysis here

Ness - Ness' stats are a little bit different than Ninten, opting instead of perfectly balanced stat growth to give him the stats of a secondary damage-dealer role as the character with the best Offense next to Poo, but also the best ability to get critical (SMAAASH!!) hits. That's actually the same as Ninten, but Ninten got it by default by having a base stat total so much higher than Ana and Lloyd that "balanced" was really strong. Ness also has a higher base stat total, but the gap is closer here and Ness's stats actually have an emphasis on critical physical hits, and if anything, is a bit slow compared to Ana and Poo, so it feels like more of a choice here.

However, when looking at Ness's PSI ability list, he's also a flavour of support PSI user, much like Ninten. Ness has HP-healing moves, both more of them and faster than Poo, but gets status-healing abilities later and can't guarantee revival of party members to full health (but has a 75% change to do it to half-health). Ness can also do single target shields. His signature offensive ability is a multi-target, no-element wave of PSI that might decrease enemies' resistance to PSI attacks. Ness is the only character to be able to put enemies to sleep or paralyze them, or use PK Flash which does a random detrimental effect (status and instant death among them). This is a major change from Ninten who gets no offensive PSI at all (but who could still hit really hard). I think Ness, even more than Ninten is an all-rounder. He really can do everything just a bit worse than the best. Maybe a little more luck-based, too, given his gamble on revival, gamble on PK Flash, gamble on criticals instead of consistent high damage like Poo. Effects like PK Flash, Hocus Pocus (Dragon Quest), and Metronome (Pokemon) always make me think of a wild mage, but Ness is deep into healing too. A wild cleric maybe?

Paula - So I realized my memory was faulty, because although Ness, Paula and Jeff are very clearly modeled after Ninten, Ana, and Lloyd, Paula isn't much like Ana mechanically at all. Paula has the same emphasis on being the party's PSI whiz kid with the highest IQ, like Ana, but notably uses it entirely for combat. She's fast too, but isn't using her Speed to go first as a healer and stabilize the party. Paula uses Fire, Freeze, and Thunder to attack her enemies, and she's kind of a glass canon with miserable defensive stats. She can also drain PSI from enemies, buff your Offense and Decrease enemies' Defense, all of which are pretty aggressive abilities. The support skill she does get is a PSI nullifying or reflecting shield, depending on the rank, like any good dueling wizard. No status effects though, which always makes me think more battlemage than black mage. The exception to her lack of healing and her inability to deal status effects are the random results of her Pray ability, which really can't be described in any other way than a wild magic effect that covers many scenarios, a small fraction of the time, randomly.

Jeff - Jeff get the exclusive ability to Spy, which give you information on the enemies' Offense and Defense, a PSI weakness, and any items they might drop, which allows you to take them after battle. I wouldn't say the looting ability suggests thief at all for Jeff, as you can't take the item and run, and I think that distinction makes the difference, but the other side of Spy is much like Goombario or Goombella from the Paper Mario series. In terms of using items to attack, Jeff is a lot like Lloyd from the first game, but with a larger set of items. Unlike Lloid, some of them have no chance to break after use, so become his defacto attacks, and he's less about inventory management, despite still using Bottle rockets. Jeff's tools also can drain HP and debuff and remove shield from everyone, including the party. That last one, plus the inherent HP-splitting effect of draining moved makes Jeff a character than levels the playing field, in theory. Reset buffs when they get out of hand, and in terms of HP, take from the rich to give to the poor. OK, so maybe he is a thief of a different kind, but I would overall call Jeff a tactical scholar/scout type who can read enemy weaknesses and choose the best moment to strike with, often limited use items, but in the meantime keeps the party from getting in a bad tactical position.

Poo - You would think Poo, a martial artist, would be a lot like the remaining character from Mother 1, Teddy who was a huge physical damage dealer, and Poo can hit the hardest of anyone in Earthbound, but he can also use PSI this time. Poo is the best at fixing status effects and reviving party members, though a bit slower at learning HP-healing abilities than Ness, and he gets multi-target PSI Shield while Ness can only apply it one party member at a time. The difference between the usefulness of this is even greater in a game with 4 party members instead of 3. Poo can also confuse enemies, guarantee fleeing from battle, and drain PP, and attack with PSI, but his damage output won't be as good as Paula's until he gets PK Starstorm. Poo has the Mirror ability to copy a move from an enemy for one turn. Honestly I don't think that one is very notable, but it's like a magical counter ability, fitting for a martial artist. I feel like it's common to see monks get status-healing in JRPGs, like Chakra in Final Fantasy, and everything else about Poo's design says monk, plus they sometimes get confusion as a physical ability like dazzling them with your fast strikes, and Poo is the fastest. However, mass-party shielding and full revival is so strong that he has strong protection cleric energy as well.

[vintagerpg]

School is in session! This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast we welcome back friend of the show Mark Sable, who is about to start teaching a class called Writing Adventures for Tabletop RPGs. Seems like something y'all might be interested in. We talk a bit about game design, about teaching games and the nebulous ways we've approached how-to in RPGs. Marks class is eight sessions starting February 6 and is part of the School of Visual Arts' continuing education program, meaning anyone can sign up! 

[ayers-l]

@ 𝓐 ، 𝚢𝚎𝚛𝚜 特 ·

[s-che]

"fuck around with it" as a design goal

one of the things ive been thinking about lately in rpgs is like, games that let you sort of just dick around and chat and figure stuff out and still feel like they (the game) meaningfully contributed to ur experience. like in a recent session of beneath pirate flags we spent maybe an hour and a half making characters and talking about a world and then maybe another hour building one (1) setting element. and thats not because that process cant be done faster, and its not because we kept getting distracted--okay, we did keep getting distracted, but that's sort of my point. even as we went down all these different side conversations and tangents and media references and conversations which weren't meaningfully "productive" in the sense of "generating a story" i never felt like we weren't playing or like we weren't playing beneath pirate flags specifically. and i think that's really neat!

to be totally clear, i can think of lots of games that i love that dont do this, often intentionally limiting the ways you can communicate with your coplayers. i think thats interesting too, but thinking about that as the only way we can design for chitchat and distraction presents a kind of norm/alternative structure where "free conversation" is the zero that we design from by restricting conversation, whereas i think i'm trying to a way of designing positively towards this state (something like dream askew/apart’s idle dreaming). i also don't know why it happens in beneath pirate flags specifically. in my experience picklist-heavy games generate this feeling more often (sasha winters's girlfriend of my girlfriend is my friend is another good example of a game that ends up sitting in this space for me a lot, i think) but i dont know if that's because of the picklists or just correlation. maybe i just like to fantasize about gay ppl.

anyway, yeah. something to design for in the future. neat!

[klerothesnowman]

Why You Should Play A Different TTRPG, but without treating you like an idiot this time

As the anti WotC discourse continues to intensify I am once again reminded that nerds are famously really, really bad at selling people on things.

I don't blame us for it, we're all neurodivergent here, it's a safe space. But now that D&D is becoming a little "Ethically Challenging" to continue to engage with and let's be completely honest here guys, isn't inspiring much hope with its recent releases it's becoming increasingly pertinent to encourage people to reach out to other RPG games.

You've no doubt heard the refrain before, someone tries to do a political Game of Thrones-esque campaign in 5e and someone chimes up and says "5e isn't designed for this you should play a DIFFERENT game." It's a conversation we've been circling the drain around for so long. And the thing is, these people are kind of right, but with enough wrong in their argument that makes it unhelpful. Because look, you've been running your political 5e game for a while, or you've been watching a Crown of Candy, you have SEEN it work, you KNOW it can work. So when people come at you with the absolutist argument of "A campaign like this can't work in 5e" they've already lost the discussion. A campaign like that CAN work in 5e. But. It will work in 5e despite 5e. It will work, but only after the DM has invented reasons you can't use magic to solve the problem, either by preventing you from doing it in the first place or by introducing magical counters to that magic. And if it's the latter, that tilts the board a little further, because now the setting is one that has high powered mages deeply involved with the political game. Great if that's what you're angling for, but a bit of a problem if you're not.

The gameplay of a game informs how the game feels to play. D&D has a lot of mechanics for combat, and not a lot of mechanics for political RP. To bring up A Crown of Candy again, everyone playing that game is a skilled improv actor, they can rock the Political RP. But how often does things turn into a big fight? That's the game of D&D rearing itself again.

But look, you've probably heard this before right? Even this isn't a new argument. But here's what I think people miss out on. Showing examples from the other side of the fence.

This whole post has actually been an excuse to talk about Wildsea

The Wildsea is a cool indie RPG that my group has been playing recently. It's a post apocalyptic game where flora grew at an absurdly accelerated rate, covering the entire world in rapidly growing trees and vines. Now, people live on the top of mountains or bits of earth pulled up by the trees, and sail across The Wildsea on big ships with chainsaws on the front that cut their way through the treetops. It's weird and mysterious, with a lot of character options to make weird and mysterious characters. But also, crucially, the various aspects of its design from how it handles travel, character building and conflicts reward creativity and narrative focused play in a way that 5e just doesn't. And it all comes together to invoke a very specific vibe.

In Wildsea your character is built from three options, your Bloodline, your Origin and your Post. All three of these options give you access to an equal number of potential "Aspects" for your character. As an example, one character could have the Bloodline of an Ektus, tall cactus people, the Origin of Anchored, the ghost of a deceased Wildsailor and have the Post of a Char, the ship's Cook.

These three options are all really whacky in of themselves, but what's cool is that how important they are depends on how much you invest into them. If you primarily want to play a Cactus Person, who defends themselves with their spines and filters water through their flesh, you can take more Aspects from your Bloodline. If you want to play a Ghost, floating through walls and throwing around objects like a poltergeist you take more Aspects from your Origin. If you want to be Sanji from One Piece, constantly on the look out for cool ingrediants to cook with, you take more Aspects from your Post. All options are equally viable, and available to you.

Compare that to 5e. In 5e (specifically 5e, I haven't messed with the new stuff) your character is built from three point five options (Plus Feats, but I'll get to them). Your Race, your Background, your Class and your Subclass. Your race gives you extra bonuses to your stats and some flavour abilities. Your Background gives you extra skill proficiencies and a flavour ability. Your class and subclass meanwhile give you your entire suite of gameplay options.

As an example, one character could have the Race of Dhampir, a half vampire, the Background of Noble and the Class of.... Let's say, Rogue with the Subclass Swashbuckler. I'm trying to make something like Alucard here, from Castlevania. The son of Dracula, using his vampiric powers for the good of humanity.

Baseline, this is pretty good. But... What if I wanted to lean into the Vampire aspect really hard? As a Dhampir I gain access to the ability to walk on walls and a bite that deals 1d4 damage and restores health/boosts my next roll. And that's kind of it. It's not something I can build my entire character around, that 1d4 damage gets out classed very quickly. What if I wanted to go all in on being a noble? Well my options are even bleaker there, as your Background only gives you a single hyper specific ability that wont be applicable to anything else.

My character is my Class, and my Class is a linear path that's decided for me in the first three levels. I've chosen Swashbuckler, but what if the reason I wanted to play a Swashbuckler was so that I could use my charms and Panache to bedazzle and beguile my opponents? Well... Panache is a skill that you don't get access to until level 9. If I chose this class for this character fantasy, I'm not going to be able to achieve it until half way into my character build, meaning a very large chunk of the campaign is going to involve me not doing what I wanted this character to do.

What's more, if someone else is playing a Swashbuckler our characters are effectively going to be played exactly the same. The Vampiric Noble Swashbuckler will be indistinguishable from the Renegade Drow Street Urchin Swashbuckler during play.

The image of a party of adventurers sitting around the campfire is pretty iconic to D&D. The downtime is very important to players roleplaying, it gives everyone a moment to stop, have their character relax, and provide an environment to discuss things with other players. There's a reason there are so many commissioned art pieces of PCs interacting around a fire. There's a reason Baldur's Gate 3 made it the place you primarily interact with your party members.

The thing is though... Are you actually encouraged to? Mechanically, this is a Long Rest. It's how the majority of classes restore their abilities and that's basically it. The opportunity is there to do more through RP, but the encouragement and reward to do so is entirely on the player. How many times has your D&D party gone. "Okay we camp and do a long rest"? Be honest with me here. You're not thinking too deep about it. It's a moment to stop because you need to stop for the next combat encounter. There is nothing encouraging you to do more than that than your own desire for it. For some groups that's enough, but not every group can do that, sometimes a group really needs a little push in the right direction.

It's the same with traveling. The D&D party traveling from location to location is equally as iconic. But in practice what does that actually look like? Same with when I asked how often your D&D party brushed over the rest, how often do they brush over the travel? How often do you just have one or two "Who goes on watch tonight?" rolls and call it a day?

In Wildsea, traveling across the treetops on your chainsaw boat is the game. It's what it's all about. There's a whole ass character sheet for your vehicle for when you need to get gnitty gritty with it, but typically your travel journey will be handled by a montage of actions. Instead of just having a single PC making an obligatory "On Watch" roll, characters can take a variety of tasks like watching the weather, tending the engines, cartographizing, working the helm. Your characters are encouraged, required, to take a position on the ship and work.

What's more, "resting" isn't really a thing like in D&D. Much of the itemization of Wildsea revolves around managing specific resources, Salvage, Specimens and Whispers (which is magic stuff that I wont really be touching on.). Instead of health points your skills and equipment can take damage, which you can recover during these montages. You can use Specimens to cook meals which heal your wounds, you can use Salvage to repair your broken equipment or make new things. Specimens and Salvage can also come with extra tags, providing bonus effects when used. You can also gain Aspects for yourself and your ship that provide recurring access to these resources, or ways to improve them and add tags.

What this translates to in gameplay is that traveling in Wildsea becomes a combination of doing your job on the ship, your chores and your personal projects. You might find it weird that I'm describing a task as a "Chore" positively, but I think it's the perfect description because it sells an aspect of the game world, and the game itself.

The Wildsea is a post apocalypse setting. A major aspect of this game's world is all the different ways that people have adjusted to living in this environment. Having a series of menial tasks like tending to your night garden and hauling up the fishing trawlers that attract bugs to eat puts you, the player, in this environment. By making meals your method for healing it puts you, the player, into a position where a well cooked meal is something immediately desirable from a practical position. It makes getting your group together for a big dinner impactful, not just from a roleplay position but from a mechanical one too. It makes roleplaying a person just trying to get by in this world the gameplay. It encourages you to care about meals and salvage.

There's no guidance for this stuff in 5e. In fact, 5e discourages it. If you want your character to be a chef in 5e there are two options to you. Proficiency with Cook's Utensils and the Chef feat. The Cook's Utensils provide you with the ability to cook meals. If you roll above a 15 the meal is "Gourmet". This doesn't really mean anything. It also allows you to "Prepare Meals" that give a whole single hitpoint more when you rest. It's not very impactful. Meanwhile the Chef Feat allows you to also cook meals, "provided you have ingredients". There's no reason to seek certain ingredients of a higher grade or anything, and in my experience it's more likely for the DM to turn around and say you don't have access to ingredients to try and make narrative tension rather than reward the player for keeping track of them. These meals you can cook restore a little bit more HP, and can provide temporary HP too.

The thing is, Feats in D&D are something you have a very limited amount of, and they're not created equally. Chef is more useful than some, but taking Chef still means your combat ability is diminished. Taking Chef means you can't take feats that are more versatile and impactful.

This is why people encourage you to play games tailor made to deliver on certain vibes and themes rather than playing everything in 5e. Because they can more effectively deliver the experience that you're looking for, without needing to struggle against the system in the first place. It guides people toward certain behaviors and rewards choices that suit the vibe. Even the best roleplayers can do even better with a bit of guidance.

[blackmagickboi]

IVE MADE MY FIRST NEW TTRPG SINCE 2019!!! I'm really honestly super proud of this and hope yall enjoy it, please even just reblogging helps!